1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to virtual desktop infrastructures and, more specifically, to systems and methods for providing, executing, and/or interacting with a distributed virtual desktop infrastructure.
2. Description of Related Art
Traditionally, virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) require a large amount of infrastructure to run all of the virtual machine workloads in a data center. At the same time, thin clients used by end-users to access the VDI sessions generally serve no greater purpose than normal thick clients. The price differential between a suitably configured thin client and a fully robust thick client is small. Further, users often want or need to perform some local processing while accessing a VDI, which results in them accessing their VDI session from a traditional laptop or desktop computing system.
However, thin clients for accessing VDI sessions pose advantages over traditional thick client computing because information technology (IT) support can offer a guaranteed service-level agreement (SLA) for VDI sessions since IT controls the complete environment. Further, environments with fixed client equipment can offer session portability that is not possible with traditional computing (e.g., doctors/nurses moving between patients rooms can use the hardware in each room to connect to an existing VDI session).